Lifeline's own troubles

Last week on the program Linda Mottram spoke about a new study that found despite the millions of dollars spent on men's mental health programs, men were not seeking help when they felt mentally stressed.

A listener to the program painted another picture and stressed the services were still not available. In his conversation with Linda Mottram, he told of the difficulty in getting help, and the 25 minutes he spent on hold with Lifeline.

The ABC frequently mentions Lifeline, often referring listeners to the service.

Linda Mottram spoke to Lifeline Chief Executive John Mendel to get a clearer picture about how the organisation is resourced, and whether there are issues with the staffing of volunteers.

Some 65% of funding for Lifeline comes from Federal Government, with other lesser resourcing coming from donations and corporation.

With the charity sector overcrowded, John Mendel said they only get a small piece of that pie.

There are approximately 11,000 volunteers with Lifeline, of which 3,500 are trained to operate crisis support lines.

Staff for peak times is the hardest, as many counsellors for Lifeline battle to balance work, life and volunteering.

"Being a volunteer based organisation we find it difficult to attract volunteers to work that very difficult shift between midnight and dawn," he said.

"We do recognise the problem, we have started to work towards some solutions, last September we decided that we need to ensure there were sufficient resources so we have started to recruit paid counsellors to operate the phones during that period and that is an ongoing process."

John Mendel stressed to Linda Mottram the scale of the problem with suicide in Australia.

"There are over 2,300 suicides reported annually," he said.

For young people aged between 15 and 44 years, it is the single greatest cause of death. Young males in this age bracket are 4 times more likely to die of suicides than females.

Mendel draws comparisons with road death tolls, saying they're approximately 50 per cent of the deaths caused by suicides.

"From our way of thinking suicide is the ultimate preventable death,' he concludes.